The 2011 BA James Beard Chef Survey

For the past five days we’ve been rolling out the results of our James Beard Award “Best Chef” nominees survey. We’ve already told you who likes to cook to heavy metal band Pantera and who hates the term “foodies”, but we’ve got even more scuttlebutt from our awesome and cooperative cheftestants. At the end of our survey, we asked each chef to anonymously answer six questions, promising that we would shred the evidence. Surprisingly, 42 of the 58 chefs ignored all of their PR agencies’ advice. Here’s what they told us, by the numbers:

-14% of the chefs who responded have punched, kicked, or slappedsomeone in their kitchen. One chef admitted to getting in an actualfistfight, but most said they resort to the F bomb instead of physicalviolence on the line. A few were seriously upset that we even asked.(Sorry.)

-30% named Grant Achatz, Alinea, or Next as the chef or restaurant that they were most tired of hearing about.

-35% of chefs admitted to having illegal workers in their kitchen. Onechef even said he was one of them. (We have a feeling this percentageis way higher in reality.)

-50% say they have cooked on the line while drunk and, um, otherwiseintoxicated. This question seemed to draw the most commentary, withanswers ranging from “who hasn’t?” to “Wasted, no. Hungover, yes.”(After reading what some of these guys are drinking after a 12-hourshift, we weren’t surprised.)

-52% keep contraband cured meats and/or cheeses in their restaurants,but the other half chooses not to play that game. Once chef went so faras to say, “I like my customers not to die when they dine with me.”

The confidential stuff was great, but we also learned a lot about our nominees from their answers to the main survey. Such as:

-These chefs do not like truffle oil. A lot of them named it as “the one foodie ingredient that you don’t really like.”

-Most nominees top their burgers with American and cheddar cheese, along with the rest of America.

-Chefs had a lot to say about trends in general, but the No. 1 trendthat they called out as annoying? Molecular gastronomy, with 13strikes. Reality cooking, cupcakes, bacon madness, and vegans werecontenders for the “most annoying” as well. And two chefs mentionedfood glue as a pet peeve.